Knocking out fireplace

[maqrollelgaviero]

Hi all,

Does anyone have any experience they can share about knocking out a fire place? It's a 30s house with what I assume is plasterboard over the original opening for the fire place and I want to reopen the 'hole' and leave it with a brick inside but no surround on the outside, just nice smooth plaster iyswim. Is this a job for the pros and how much do you think it might cost or can I do it myself without messing up my living room!

Any thoughts welcome

We had a bricked (plasterboarded) up fireplace. We got a chimney sweep to come round, he knocked a small hole out and put his brushes up to check that the flue was ok before knocking the rest out.
I think he charged £60 or roundabouts for this.
We then knocked it out properly ourselves and paid for a plasterer to make it look good (£70 with some other small plastering aroud the house thrown in). We painted the bricks in the hole in firepaint black and then installed a wood burner - Lovely!

Well worth doing!

Do it yourself!!

You can always get a plasterer in afterwards to tidy it up a bit if you make a mess of it. It shouldn't cost too much.

thanks for your help, can I ask what you used to cut the edges so it ended up square shaped rather than ragged from the sledge hammer?

The plasterer put in a corner mesh along the three sides to make them square and then plastered on top.
Unless you are pretty good at plastering, I don't think that part of the job is diy. HOwever the knocking out is easy, the only concern is to check that the chimney itself is safe ie wont have loads of brick pieces falling down on the inside etc